Gov't plans to victimise building workers

BY
SUE BOLTON

The building industry royal commission's final 23-volume report (except
for one volume which is being kept secret) was made public on March 26-27.
By the time of federal workplace relations minister Tony Abbott's speech
to the National Press Club on April 2, the federal cabinet had already
agreed to all of the recommendations in the report.

Abbott used his speech to repeat the threat he made last year that the
federal government would withhold around $4-5 billion of federal grants
for state construction projects from any state government which didn't
cooperate with the planned federal witch-hunt against unionism in the building
industry.

The federal government is planning to establish the innocently named
Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) with a large enough
secondment of state police to cover all CBD building sites.

Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) construction
division national assistant secretary Dave Noonan explained to Green
Left Weekly that under this proposal, workers in the building industry
would lose certain fundamental rights. The right to silence, a fundamental
principle underlying the criminal justice system, will be abolished for
workers in the building industry.

Abbott's construction industry police force will have coercive powers
to direct people to answer questions. They would be compelled to point
out to the police who the union official, steward or activist is on site.
The ABCC cops will have powers of entry, search and seizure.

The ABCC will also run cases for employers in the Australian Industrial
Relations Commission and in the criminal court system. This proposal is
aimed at persuading more employers to come forward with cases against the
construction unions, because the cost of the cases would be borne by the
government and not by the employers.

Another recommendation which royal commissioner Terence Cole made and
which the government has picked up is to “ make it illegal to even advocate
or ask for a pattern bargain”, said Noonan.

Lawful industrial action, which is already extremely limited under the
federal Workplace Relations Act, will shortly be even more limited for
building workers if the government gets its way.

Noonan described the tortuous process of taking protected industrial
action which was proposed by Cole and adopted by cabinet. Employees of
any building company would have to have a ballot as to whether they wanted
to be represented by a union or not. If they agreed to be represented by
the union, it would then need to go through an elaborate bargaining process
with the employer.

Prior to any industrial action being taken, there'd need to be a further
secret ballot, in which the ballot would have to specify the precise form
of industrial action to be taken.

The industrial action could only last for two weeks and then the ABCC
would be required to demand cessation of the industrial action and impose
a three-week “cooling off” period. The ABCC would have the power to prevent
any further industrial action after that.

If Abbott gets away with implementing the recommendations of the royal
commission — a ban on pattern bargaining, the introduction of secret ballots,
restrictions on protected industrial action, restrictions on the right
of union officials to enter workplaces, the introduction of a special construction
industry police force, limiting the payment for lost time due to health
and safety issues — then construction workers will be severely limited
in their ability to protect their pay and conditions. And it would set
a dangerous precedent for the whole labour movement.

“What you've got here is a move away from any notion of collective bargaining”
, said Noonan. “It basically forces workers and unions to struggle for
better conditions with both hands tied behind their back and the employer
armed with a baseball bat.”

Noonan also pointed out that this legislation would breach International
Labour Organisation conventions because it would “subvert any right to
bargain collectively, to be represented by a union, or to take industrial
action to defend your wages and conditions, as well as dozens of triggers
to deregister the union for the most trivial of matters — those are Cole's
recommendations.”

From the very beginning, the royal commission showed no interest in
the issues it was purported to have been set up to investigate — corruption
and stand-over tactics.

“Most of the 392 adverse findings are incorrect or very trivial”, Noonan
said. “Of all of these adverse findings, there are only two where there
is any suggestion of threats of violence. One of them involves someone
who's been expelled from the union. The other one is a trivial incident
[involving] two union officials pushing their way into an Master Builders
Association meeting.

“The vast majority [of the adverse findings] are about disputes over
right of entry to work sites where employers have refused to allow union
officials the right to talk to their members. [The commission] is seeking
to characterise that as great illegality and bad behaviour, and the editorial
writers of the mainstream papers have picked up on that.”

One of the reasons for the Western Australian branch of the CFMEU having
290 out of the report's 392 adverse, is that under Richard Court's Coalition
state government industrial legislation union officials' right of entry
to workplaces was far more restrictive than under the federal Workplace
Relations Act. The only way that a diligent union could consult with its
members was to ignore the law and continue to visit work sites.

“All of those findings were made without the full cross-examination
or full examination of the evidence. They're made on one-sided evidence,
and it's clear that very few, if any, would stand up in court”, noted Noonan.

“In 18 months, with $60 million, Cole made two findings of employers
breaching occupational health and safety, and they were in the Northern
Territory. In an industry in which an average of 50 people are killed each
year, Cole couldn't find any other employers breaching occupational health
and safety.

“Cole didn't find one example of tax evasion in the industry, and 'Snowy
off the tram' could go and find tax evasion in the building industry. So
it's very clear that he was absolutely biased and subjective in what he
wanted to look at.

“There were no findings of corruption against the union. The commission
didn't even call any of the so-called organised crime figures to give evidence
against the union. It lays bare the fact that the commission was only ever
about industrial relations from the beginning.

“They've been through all of our officials' bank accounts, vehicle registration,
boat registration, property searches. All the senior officials of the union
have had their financial affairs scrutinised, including their spouses,
their families, their children and they haven't found corruption, they
haven't found our officials to be on the take”, said Noonan.

From Green Left Weekly, April 9, 2003.

Visit the Green Left Weekly
home page.

From GLW issue 533